Tag Archives: prevention
Screening for Cancer
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 5th May 2012Below is the PowerPoint presentation of the talk Screening for Cancer that I gave today to Spring Cancer Conference sponsored by the Lubbock-Crosby-Garza County Medical Society. A related presentation can be found here. Screening for Cancer
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Medical Costs and Wrong Assumptions
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 13th April 2011Bob Duffy Director of Ipsos Social Research Institute, is a true believer in governmental social planning. In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal he opines that people are now ready for the government to help us make the “right” choices that will benefit our health. He’s particularly interested in getting people to stop…
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Free Medical Care
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 15th July 2010The federal government has decreed that many medical tests and some types of medical care must be provided by health insurance companies without any co-pays. Among the new “free” services are some which are clearly of no overall health benefit. For example, cholesterol screening (which is specifically mentioned as a test that must be provided…
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Ban Water
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 11th March 2010A Brooklyn legislator has introduced a bill in the New York legislature that would ban chefs in New York from adding salt to food – he must be the same guy that designed my new toilet. Good for him. The public is as dumb as a pillar of salt and needs its enlightened lawmakers to…
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Statins and Venous Thromboembolic Disease
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 23rd April 2009The New England Journal of Medicine just published a paper examining whether the cholesterol lowering drug rosuvastatin (brand name Crestor) prevented venous thromboembolic disease. The study concludes that statin therapy does reduce the likelihood of this disorder. But like so much in medicine there’s less here than meets first glance. To begin with all the…
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Early Diagnosis of Cancer
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 23rd December 2008Wired.com, of all places, has an excellent article about the early diagnosis of cancer: Why Early Detection is the Best Way to Beat Cancer by Thomas Goetz. The problem is that early detection is a way to beat cancer, but it almost certainly is not the best way. First of all the article is very…
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